Learn to recognize when it’s time to stretch out

Donna Alteen, founder of Time + Space, recently invested in research tools that help clients understand what people are doing online and how they're using their mobile devices. (ERIC WYNNE / Staff)

Is your work life feeling a bit stale? Perhaps it’s time to take a risk, suggests Donna Alteen, and shake things up a little.

Alteen, founder of Halifax’s Time + Space Media agency, has been in the media business for a couple of decades, and she has grown accustomed to working fast and adapting quickly.

She observes that as your skill set increases and you gain experience in a diverse range of situations, the crises become less overwhelming.

While you may not have encountered the exact emergency you find yourself facing now, you’ve probably dealt with something similar in the past.

“As you get more experience under your belt, the things you’re experienced in become second nature to you. You start to master things.”

That’s when you need to move on and up, she says. Alteen compares this risk taking to climbing a tree.

“You have to let go of one branch to reach for the next one.”

In her work, she says she knows it’s time to stretch “when I’m not feeling the same excitement.” That’s an indicator, she believes, that she has mastered the level she’s been playing at and is ready to jump to the next.

Of course, you don’t want to leap too soon. That base of experience you draw on will need to be solid as you handle increasingly complex situations. And no one knows what’s coming next.

Alteen mentions technology as one of the fields where the future is unknown.

“It’s hard to know where that’s going,” she says, noting in particular that unreal pace of growth of social media.

With Time + Space, as soon as Alteen saw how crucial online platforms were going to become, she says, “I immediately went out and found a lead for our digital expertise.”

By addressing it early and by bringing in a “digital native” with top-of-the-line skills, Alteen was able to instill a digital culture that, she says, “runs throughout the organization.”

For example, more recently she has invested in research tools that help client companies understand what people are doing online and how they’re using their mobile devices.

The value of this information lies not in the numbers themselves but in interpreting them in usable ways, she adds.

“The world is data rich right now and insight poor.”

Time + Space Media clients include both public and private organizations that range widely in size and sector, including telecommunications firms, tourism, packaged goods and entertainment companies.

Across the board, what’s the biggest change she has seen in recent years?

“It’s the collective power that the public has. Clients are just wrapping their heads around that.”

Many organizations still have departmental silos with little communication among various groups, she says. They may realize it’s a problem but not know exactly how to address it.

Alteen explains that there are three keys.

“They have to be on their toes, media and tech savvy, and be transparent and authentic.”

These are important for quick, appropriate company responses and actions, she notes. That’s a capacity organizations need to have because anything could happen.

In the past, companies owned and controlled the brands they created, she says, but those days are over.

“The power is no longer with marketers; the power is with the consumer.”

Thriving in Tough Times is a series developed by the business development centre at Saint Mary's University in Halifax.